I am an evil giraffe. Who no longer blogs about politics.

Picture a freshman Virginia Democrat; one with the stink of DOOM about him. This Member of Congress has just watched his last, remaining (and faint) hope for electoral salvation slip away, thanks to his own party… and his own ideological faction, at that. It is after midnight in the halls of Congress. The next time that he walks those halls, it will be as a defeated man whose name nobody will remember to spell correctly. He just wants to go home, in the rain and the dark, and prepare for his fate with what dignity he possesses, or can muster.

But the Member of Congress may not simply walk off into the dark unremarked… because the Speaker of the House who has ruthlessly sacrificed his career and his energies for the last two years has insisted that he turn back and attend upon her. There is no need, of course: but she requires one last ritual display of her power over his life; and out of habit, he obeys. And then, once the Speaker’s whim is obeyed, the Member of Congress is free to go… wherever it is that sacrifices go, once they have been sacrificed. And broken.